


home is right up here

by inmylife



Series: 30 ways to hold [9]
Category: CLC (Band)
Genre: F/F, Future, Spaceships, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 14:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15512154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: seunghee/elkie + on the couch





	home is right up here

**Author's Note:**

> 30 ways to hold: 30 short fics based on tumblr user tiptoe39's list of prompts having to do with cuddling!

There is a couch in the middle of their spaceship. 

 

Elkie had brought it from home - from Hong Kong, it's what the West calls  _ Oriental-style, _ traditionally Chinese-patterned, teal satin with gold embroidered birds and branches, and there are matching pillows with tassels. It's not technically in the middle of their spaceship, firstly because it's on the top level and secondly because that implies it's in the middle of the room rife for tripping over when really it's backed against the paneled wall, just the right height to slide up against the straight part of the wall before the curved clear part starts so the inhabitants can look out at the stars. Seunghee, like most of the others, has never dared to sit on that couch, because it is Elkie's and Elkie's alone. 

 

They all have something like that. For Sorn, there's a stash of Thai food shipped to her from the Bangkok airbase every month; for Eunbin, it's the guitar that even though Seunghee can play, she's not allowed near. Yeeun, as odd as it sounds, has a collection of ornate knives she swears she'll use to propose to someone someday, and Seungyeon has one dress - just one - that no one else on the ship is allowed to borrow. Yujin's mother gifted her a set of earrings before liftoff, dangly pearl ones that she threatened Sorn with a kitchen knife once not to touch. And Seunghee? 

 

Seunghee has the lamp. 

 

It had sat somewhere in her bedroom, once, when she was little; she doesn't remember where. It has a pale purple trunk and green arms hanging out from each side - not really arms, but springs with green spheres on the ends. The lightbulb cover is white, and when Seunghee was a teenager and it had sat on her shelved headboard in high school she had stuck buttons in it. From a bookstore, from school, from a TV show she'd liked. That lamp had been with her from her first house to the end of the world to her second house to a soul-saving run to space the summer before she was due to start college. Sorn, their resident mechanic, had somehow wired it so that it'd work in the ship, and Seunghee would never stop being thankful. 

 

Earth was a flood of mud and lightning now, livable but not full of life, and whatever they could bring with them from home they cherished. 

 

Seunghee supposes she could say that it's night, now. The sky is always dark and the stars are always out and time is less real on board than it was on earth, but now is the time when the lights on the lower levels dim and the timer set for them four years ago tells them to sleep. 

 

Seunghee can't sleep. 

 

This isn't a usual problem for her, and she doesn't know what to do with herself, so she heads up the stairs from the lowest floor, where their individual bedrooms are, to the top level. The observatory - nicknamed so because Yujin had gone to visit a real observatory when she was very young and had told the others it looked similar. It's not like they had a way of disproving that, so the name stuck. 

 

Sorn meets her halfway at the stairs between the second floor, where the engines are housed, and the first. "If the gravity gets a little wonky in the next ten minutes, yell for me," she says. She looks tired, but more than that frustrated. She has oil behind her ear and her hair is falling out of its ponytail. 

 

"Go to sleep," Seunghee tells her, not unkindly. "We can float for a few hours. I haven't operated in zero-g since the flight from Earth." 

 

Sorn nods and reaches over to pat Seunghee's cheek. It's an odd gesture, but Seunghee doesn't really mind it. 

 

"Night," Seunghee calls after her as she heads down. Sorn responds only with an "mmph".

 

Seunghee expects to be alone when she reaches the observatory, just her and the stars, but she's not. Elkie's there, on her couch. 

 

Seunghee trips on the last stair - not because she's surprised, but because she's a klutz - and Elkie turns. "Hey," calls the younger. "Come sit." She scooches over and pats the space next to her on the couch - she's giving Seunghee permission to sit. 

 

"Can I?" 

 

"Duh," Elkie laughs, as though it's obvious. Well, it kind of is, but Seunghee's still hesitant. "Couches are meant for multiple people. I always wondered why none of you ever sat with me. Come here." 

 

Seunghee blinks at her but sits down where Elkie indicates. The younger girl puts an arm around her and pulls her close. 

 

"So what's up?" she asks. 

 

"Couldn't sleep," Seunghee answers. "You too? Or…"

 

"Nah, you guys all know my sleep schedule's a mess," Elkie laughs. "I just wanted to look outside for a bit. Earth's that way, you know," she adds, pointing. 

 

Seunghee leans her head down onto Elkie's shoulder. "You miss it, right?" 

 

Elkie exhales. "Sort of. I miss the way it used to be. Back before the only way to leave your house was in a plastic ball." 

 

"Like hamsters," Seunghee says, which is an odd comparison given that hamsters went extinct when the girls were in elementary school. Elkie laughs anyway. 

 

"When I was little my friend had one of those. A hamster. She didn't have it in a plastic ball, though." 

 

Seunghee laughs. Then, she realizes that they're no longer on the couch. True to Sorn's word, the gravity had glitched. 

 

Elkie giggles and wraps her arms around Seunghee's waist. Her hair, turned blonde by some mishap of Yujin's temper and an excess of bleach originally shipped for cleaning purposes, floats around her face and twines into Seunghee's plain black-brown hair. 

 

The couch is bolted to the ground, and as Seunghee and Elkie paddle through the air back to hold onto it, Seunghee realizes that maybe Earth isn't home anymore.

 

Maybe home is here.

**Author's Note:**

> ive been sold on this ship since that one produsorn episode where seunghee keeps hyping up elkie ok
> 
> also wanted to try a space au so here u go
> 
> twt is missyehana and tumblr is zhengkis stan clc ok bye


End file.
